Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The voters in Canning will go to the polls in little more than four weeks to choose a federal parliamentary representative. These are sad circumstances. Canning has lost Don Randall, who was genuinely devoted to his constituents; he was a man who was relentless in his efforts to serve the people in his electorate.

Canning extends from the eastern border of my electorate and spans through significantly diverse communities and landscapes, from the outer-metropolitan hub of Armadale to the coastal beauty of Mandurah and beyond. It has hills, farms, folk festivals, rivers, tourism and even gold mining. It is a landscape I am familiar with as a person who grew up a bit further south in Donnybrook before moving to the big smoke.

The people in Canning now face an important choice. They have to consider whether to support a government that has no positive agenda and is characterised by negativity and fear. They have to consider whether they are well-served by a Prime Minister who wants to reward British royals but punish hardworking and vulnerable Australians. He is a Prime Minister whose only economic achievement is to enter free trade agreements that weaken Australian job security and sovereignty and put our environmental and social protections at the mercy of international tribunals.

Earlier, this year Don Randall himself found that he could not support that Prime Minister. The alternative for the people of Canning is to support Labor's forward-looking and positive vision for Australia and to support a future in which our public education and health services are strengthened, our environment is protected and our Australian jobs are increasingly sourced from the emerging industries and technologies of the 21st century.